


Truth (I wasn't ready to hear)

by Wisetypewriter



Series: little misunderstandings [2]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Under the Red Hood
Genre: Bruce Wayne Has Issues, Bruce Wayne Whump, Bruce Wayne broke down, Complicated relationship between father and son, Don't copy to another site, Gen, It went to Hell, Jason Todd had a plan, Protective Jason Todd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-11-23 00:08:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20882927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wisetypewriter/pseuds/Wisetypewriter
Summary: "It's him or me. You have to decide!"But Bruce can't.The lies took their tolls and Jason comes to a terrifying realization.





	Truth (I wasn't ready to hear)

_ You remain unavenged. _

It's a truth that carries him harder than the harshest winds and the most violent waves. That eases every time he stands over one of his teachers' lifeless corpses. That helps him kneel next to kids being triaged for trafficking rings that makes him want to vomit. That lets him tell them 'don't worry, you're safe now'

and wonders why he never stops that lie in the bud. No one's really safe. But they need something, a light like Robin used to be, and Jason's many things now, more red than green and yellow, but he's still got a bit of that magic left.

He promises to remember each face long after he's freed them, past the time Ducra shoves him in sacred waters with a lot of blabber about destinies and proper manners. Chosen? Nah, definitely stubborn. He's not been chosen for much in his life, and sometimes, he thinks he ought to have been passed over in favor of someone else.

It's the poison that drips from his fingers when he tinkle with the bomb, when he takes hours and hours to avoid the sensors, to attach the thing that will kill Batman under the Batmobile.

It's the deafening silence in his ears when he watches Batman climbs inside his car, when he has a thumb over the detonator, when the tires comes to life and spin and push Batman far out of sight. When he puts the second hand on top of the button and he glares and he shakes so badly the green creeps over the corner of his eyes.

Then, it's the curse under his breath when he rolls over, puts the cap on the detonator and cries tears that burn trails down his cheeks.

"Why, Dad?"

***

Jason can't kill the Joker. He's tried. Held the gun at his head, the perfect occasion, a surprise, a shock that the clown couldn't have seen coming. And he- he-

Wasted it.

(It's the one time he can't talk about with anyone else. He knew, even then, that everyone would ask him. Why hadn't he? If it _ was _ purely a moral standard, a hard reality of the world, then why hadn't he? And he can't speak those words. He can't be the one to say them _first_.)

The clown's curious, unaware, and it's enough to spark the hatred all over again, let himself be a brazing inferno that would consume all of Gotham's monsters.

But it's not enough to pull the trigger yet.

_ "You remain unavenged" _ Talia told him.

_ "He didn't love you," _he heard.

He runs that night. Runs to a safehouse and panics his way to unconsciousness. Dreams of green and laughter and black.

He wakes aching, feeling like the scum of the Earth, lower than Talia's teachers, than the scurrying rats of Gotham's underbelly, because he couldn't move a finger.

Because half of it was the Joker. He could have half his peace forever.

(it's not enough)

Jason woke up in his coffin. The League's best minds couldn't figure out why, even though Jason could have told them. Revenants returned to fulfill tasks left incomplete, to see something to the end. One's a question he asks to the world, the other... the other's for his father.

***

He’s smirking when Dick sticks the landing. When he shouts the taunt over the train’s arrival and pulls off Bruce’s vanishing act. Dick could do with a little deflating, and he doesn’t want his ‘big brother’ to stick his nose in their business.

Dick could leave. It's part of what baffled Jason about him. He'd gotten close enough to Gotham, had gotten some of his blood on her, and she's that kinky bitch that has to return the favor.

He thinks 'Justice' when Dick lands badly (not his-parents-badly, God, he's not that much of an asshole, but enough to break an ankle). His big brother somehow never remember the first lesson gravity saw fit to teach him.

Everything falls.

\- Jason hasn't forgotten so much as he never learned -

Everything, minus the throbbing pain in his jaw and the blood dripping down his nose from Batman's knee, is going according to plan.

"Is _ this _ what you think this is about?" he spits. "I don't know what blinds you more..."

He hasn't bought into the idea that Batman is more than man since the guy bought him a burger to share on top of the Batmobile. He's seen his dad bleed. Snore. Eat cake. Shamble about the manor saying it's too early for this at three in the afternoon.

Batman's human. A costume.

He's known that since forever ago now. Saving Jason had been impossible. The injuries would have killed him, even if the warehouse hadn't been rigged to blow up sky high.

"Bruce, I _ forgive you _ for not saving me," and he means it, and for a second, it's Robin bleeding through the Red Hood, wishing to save just another soul lost. Wanting to soothe a hurt he knows is eating his father alive.

(Red Hood, scoffing, 'Bruce, maybe. Batman? Pretty un-eaten, if you ask me?')

It's his moment of truth. (he can't say triumph when he feels like he's gonna break in half, when he thinks 'Batman can't _ touch _ guns' and 'I'll be doing what I already should have done months ago' and he'll have to settle for half his peace forever.)

Better than nothing.

"But why is ** _HE _ **still alive?!"

Why, Dad?

Batman laughs.

Jason jumps out of his skin (he imagines the Joker doing the same, the Joker's a monster, he can't be feeling something as human as shock). He's heard Bruce laugh. Heard the warm chuckles, and the thought summons a phantom hand to ruffle his hair, call him 'Jay' like he's worth something.

He checks, he _ has _ to check, but Joker is silent, for once in his God forsaken life. That unholy sound, that lost, bitter laugh is coming from the Batman.

(Robin had made it a game, during patrol, to steal a chuckle from Batman. He's always taken pride in being good at it.)

"Bruce, the fuck-?" he can't control the trembling of his voice. "Bruce? _ Dad? _"

Since when is his dad so _ small _? Bent over, the cape hiding most of him, and it's like seeing an eight years old, hiding behind his parents' bloody corpses. (Jason's never seen it, not even the pictures that were forever banned from the Manor. But now he knows, a steely certainty that makes him sick.)

Joker finally comes to, and the shriek rises and bounces green against the inside of Jason's head.

"Oh, Junior, you _ did it _ ! Congratulations! Of all the monsters in this crackwhore of a town, _ you're _the one that did it! You broke the bat!"

Jason's been trained by the League of Assassins in all the ways lethal. By Batman, in all the ways to avoid it (and that's twice the knowledge, it is harder to stand on the edge than to jump). But in the end, it's Gotham's training that takes over.

The gunshot startles him. Them. The slimy apartment, the scene of their ultimate showdown, is dead as the inside of his coffin. His heartbeat picks up, (_ where was he trailing his gun? _) and he's gripping his father by the shoulders. Scanning the costume for tears, for gushing red. Bruce is limp as an old John without a blue pill, and Jason's wondering why he did all this.

-He had to know. Had to _ see _ , to _ hear _ , to _ feel _ , that he'd meant more than a costume to the man he'd given his soul to. That he hadn't taken down the walls of years of mistrusts and misery for a **liar**. -

Joker's last few wheezes are meaningless.

He wishes he had the time to appreciate that. He already knows he'll blow the place up.

"Jason..." Bruce whispers through the Bat, and Jason can't fight the urge to fall back. Hard. "Jaylad. I'm sorry. I'm sorry." His voice loses strength, but he continues mouthing the words. It's like he's forgotten everything else.

And Jason, ass on the grimy, dirty floor of an abandoned apartment, one glove slowly seeping in a monster's blood, the other around his belt (for something, for a gadget, a _ toy _ like he'd called them earlier, that would make things better) really, _ really _ wants to go home.

***

Bruce passed out.

For lack of air, of tears, of _ mind _, he can't tell, and fuck, he's as tall as Bruce, nearly as bulky, but he's no different than the street rat that hid behind dumpsters at the moment. Hoping to vanish. With League and All-Caste training on top of the rest, he could. Disappear. Never be found again.

He's not sure if that had been the plan. (It can't have been. Bruce would have pulled the trigger. Right? If it came down to Joker and Jason, he _ would _ have had to. And then, maybe, Jason could have returned to the Manor. Home.)

He pulls Bruce up on his back. Fuck his dad's heavy. Gonna be slow. They inch their way down a frankly disgusting staircase, ignoring the obvious smell of drugs and cigarettes from half the apartment door they walk by (Black Mask's goons, because taunting the bastard never got old), and get out on the street, with only a mask and a cowl between them. He's rarely felt this open and vulnerable in Crime Alley. Explosive helmets were the shit, until you realized you had to go without for the whole night afterward.

His senses are heightened by paranoia. It'd take just one brave (and **suicidal**) fucker to take out Batman in the circumstances. With any luck, the smart ones would have booked it the second they saw Batman chase the new crime lord on the block. The Alley's mostly quiet. He hears the sound of his own boots easily, despite his heavier breathing.

His territory, he repeats to himself. No one's gonna dare to mess with him just yet. He's got a bullet with Black Mask's name on it still. Half of him wants to ditch Bruce somewhere safe, light a beacon, then haul ass to carve a path through the last of Blackie's gang. Forget the disaster. Pretend. Just like he'd wasted his first shot at the Joker.

_ \- For THIS _, laughs a voice that is far too green. -

But he wouldn't be able to come back from that.

Bruce _ whimpers _ when his shoulders bump into an emergency ladder. Jason can't fathom the nightmares he's going through, if he makes a sound like that.

It's a relief that he finds a working line and grapples them both on a nearby rooftop. Up there, they're alone enough that he can actually feel everything crash down on him.

"Fuck." He punches the tiles, hard enough to displace a few. "Fuck! You had to- you couldn't-"

He doesn't have the strength.

Pressing the button is more routine than something he actually intents at the moment. The explosion rocks the roof, washing them over with the dying shockwave, bathing them in orange light for the instant of a flash. The remains crumbled on themselves, burying the cooling body of the monster that started it all.

Now what?

He wants to go home.

He never allowed himself that thought before, but now that everything is ashes and a mess he can't even begin to comprehend, the longing is hitting him full force. Home. The Manor.

He doesn't want to see Alfred.

It's silly. He's never doubted him.

Loved like a grandson. In moments when there's nothing else, the words change a little. Loved _ as _a grandson, the two of them in the manor's kitchen, rolling dough and sipping pretentious tea that tastes of fresh air and breeze around rose bushes.

But not more than Alfred's son.

He's fine with that. Truly, he is. Bruce would never have stomached _ his _ father's presence, knowing that Alfred had killed, even if the monster deserved it. He never wanted to make Alfred choose between them. Least of all because the answer was already obvious.

If only _ Bruce _ could have felt the same...

He glances over at Batman, still lying on his back, unconscious, unmoving, except for his lips, that form something suspiciously like 'Jay'.

He can't stay here.

Jason trembles as he digs beneath the cowl and pulls out the little piece of equipment that could have saved his first life. The pressure he puts on the button is excessive. But that's the night for it, right?

"Oracle? Tell me you saw it."

Static. Far too much static. He's praying that the coms aren't dead. He's almost sure. Nothing should have really damaged them, except perhaps the explosion from his helmet.

"... Jason." The best voice modulators in the world couldn't hide the mess of emotions in those two syllables. "What are you doing?"

"I... I can't," he stutters. "Send someone. Anyone. I can't."

He drops the coms and flees.


End file.
